Identifying the Stakeholders in the Project
Discuss about the Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement in Projects.
Stakeholders have an important role in a project. From the entire case study, there had been several incident noticed during the entire process of implementing Dotcom schools payroll system with a modern, technology-based solution. This would provide greater functionality to provide a better user interface and more useful information about the national schools workforce. If the tasks associated throughout the timeline of the project implementation are to be noticed, the stakeholders involved within the system involved in the implementation can be figured out.
For identifying the stakeholders, it is necessary that all the events occurring in the project implementation needs to be analyzed. The first set of event that occurred in October 2008 included direct customers, which are the board of trustees, and users, which are the principals and the school administrators (Missonier & Loufrani-Fedida, 2014). These people can be identified as the project stakeholders from this event occurrence. However, their involvement in the project was very low compared to the others.
The next process of service design and development phase includes software designing, testing and a larger set of employees needed for quality management. Therefore, the process states that employees involved in this process are also a set of stakeholders in the project. These stakeholders had thorough involvement within the project introduced in the case study.
Payroll administration in the project process included change management plans that the ministry had suggested. Therefore, the Ministry, in this case, has also been direct stakeholders in the entire project plan with the most involvement within the plan itself. The Project Board and the Novopay Business Owners can also be declared as the stakeholders in the project who are directly involved within the project orientation and propagation. These stakeholders also have active participation in the business process since the commencement of 9 February 2012 meeting of the Project Board.
After the project Go Live on 14 August 2012, the project had two Confidence Points acquired and endorsed by PricewaterhouseCoopers allowing the project stage gates (Cuppen, 2016). Therefore, since that time onwards, the project had active participation of that organization making them the active stakeholders of the project.
The Minister of English, Parata and Foss approved the continuation of the project since the time 15 August 2012, making them the active project stakeholders. However, during that time, there had been no people to be appointed in the project for further development of the project. Although this made the project suffer unruly manners of project propagation like, missing project deadlines and project milestones; the project also missed having active and important stakeholder involvements. The lack of a Program Director with overall accountability reporting to the project’s Senior Responsible Officer meant that the Project Board and the Business Owner were the effective points of integration for project planning and management (Yang, 2014). Therefore, after the project Go Live, the Board decided to involve a Program Director and a Senior Responsible Officer that would act as an active project stakeholder in the project.
Prioritizing the Stakeholders Based on Power and Interest
In spite of the range of assurance activities across this project, there was no overall responsibility for Independent Quality Assurance, its scope did not take in the entire project, and it was not provided continuously. Ministers, central agencies and the Ministry placed confidence in the declaration activities being undertaken. Therefore, there were people appointed in this post as well who would help in checking the quality in every step of the project development, making them active and important stakeholders in the project.
The former Secretaries for Education took an unwarranted level of comfort from the governance of the Novopay project. The lack of engagement with the project by the Ministry’s Leadership Team and Audit and Assurance Committee, and the weaknesses in the project’s governance, are matters for which a Chief Executive must take accountability. This discussion in the project board meeting assured that Secretaries for the Education, Leadership Team and Audit and Assurance Committee also were included as the stakeholders of the project. Along with these stakeholders, the Chief Executive handling both these departments also was included as the project stakeholders (Wüstemeyer et al., 2015). The schools and the students in concern with this project are also the stakeholders of the project having an active participation in the project since they are on the receiving end of the end product. Therefore, after all these processes involved in the project propagation gives the idea of the list of stakeholders involved in the project encircling the entire processes are listed as above.
The entire project for the implementing Datacom schools payroll system with a modern, technology-based solution had a lot of ups and downs during the entire project proceeding. There had been a lot of failed attempts and changes in the courses of the project propagation. This also compelled the Project Heads and the Board of Directors to add upon several posts and people throughout the project course adding to the list of stakeholders directly and indirectly related to the project.
The set of stakeholders include people such as, direct customers, which are the board of trustees, and users, which are the principals and the school administrators. These people can be identified as the project stakeholders from this event occurrence. The process states that employees involved in the process of development and software testing are also a set of stakeholders in the project. These stakeholders had thorough involvement within the project introduced in the case study. Independent Quality Assurance checkers are also listed as the stakeholders.
The Minister of English, Parata and Foss are also the stakeholders of the project as per their participation is concerned. Ministers, central agencies and the Ministry is also stakeholders of the project, as well as the people appointed for project development, making them active and important stakeholders in the project (Martin & Rice, 2015). The Project Board and the Novopay Business Owners can also be declared as the stakeholders in the project who are directly involved within the project orientation and propagation. After the project Go Live, the Board decided to involve a Program Director and a Senior Responsible Officer that would act as an active project stakeholder in the project. The Ministry, in this case, has also been direct stakeholders in the entire project plan with the most involvement within the plan itself. After the project Go Live on 14 August 2012, the project had two Confidence Points acquired and endorsed by PricewaterhouseCoopers allowing the project stage gates. Therefore, since that time onwards, the project had active participation of that organization making them the active stakeholders of the project.
The two most important factors of the priorities of stakeholders in the project propagation are the power that the stakeholder possesses and the interest they show on the project propagation. Therefore, it can be stated that the priority list of stakeholders are arranged with respect to the power they possess in the project as well as the interest they deliver. It can be specified that even if a stakeholder has low power, there are chances that they have high interest in the project (Heslinga et al., 2017). On the other hand, it is also possible that there is high power of a person needed in the task, though they do not show much interest in the project propagation. The priority list in this project is decided as per the permutation and combination of the power and interests of the stakeholders in the project. The situations state the project propagation and the involvement of the stakeholders in it. After the analysis of the entire project, the priority of the stakeholders can be arranged within the following ranges:
- High power, highly interested people (to be managed closely): Requires full involvement and engaging. It takes a huge amount of effort keeping these stakeholders satisfied. This priority group includes people like the Ministers, Ministry, central agencies, Minister of English, Parata and Foss, the Novopay Business Owners and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
- High power, less interested people (to be kept satisfied): It requires enough work with these people to keep them satisfied, but it is not at all possible that they would become bored with follow up messages. This list includes the people in the project like the Project Board, the Program Director and the Senior Responsible Officer.
- Low power, highly interested people (to be kept informed): It is required to adequately inform these people. Talking to them to ensure that there are no major issues that might be arising during the task. People in this category are often very helpful with handling the detailed structure of a project. This list includes the employees and the project heads in responsibility of making the software.
- Low power, less interested people (to be monitored): It is required to monitor these people however; these people are easily prone to become bored with excessive communication and follow ups. These are the direct customers in the project, that is, principals and the school administrators.
The stakeholders of the company can be said as the key stakeholders if the stakeholders fulfilled some requirements of the company. The mandatory feature that the stakeholders must have is given below:
The stakeholders can be said as the key stakeholders if the user is clearly identified that what they want from the stakeholders. For an example like employees of a firms strategic planning team know that that they want to generate good amount of revenue from the clients (Caniato et al., 2014). They want innovation from the employees of the and they want high funding from the company partners, though they could not clearly said what they want from their community so the relationship cannot be said as the key. In this case study the authority wants to hike they payroll so it is very clear that they management and the higher authorities just want to generate revenue from its customers.
The relationship with the stakeholders have to be dynamic, that the thing is that the user want to grow or not. For an example, like a company that runs many retired villages had dynamic and strategic relation with the people of the residents. This wanted that the occupancy increased so that the fees can be increased for the services. However, it’s strange that the relationship with the university is static and focused operationally. This was the all what needed. Though the university is not achieved the role of the key stakeholders. In this case study the ministers and the project board leader want that the more students will take admission in the school so the services charge will also be increased and it will benefited the school so they can be said as the key stakeholders of the company.
Another criterion is whether the user can exists without changing the stakeholders or replacing the stakeholders. For an example in an IT firm the Human Resource Manager who taken a loan is listed the bank as the stakeholder. In that case the bank cannot be said as the key stakeholders as the loan can be taken or refinanced from another source as well. In the case study the ministry and the finance minister van be terms as the key stakeholders as they provide the finance that is required for the school. The project leader is also a key stake holder as the whole project will be done by the same project manager the project manager cannot be easily replaced.
The questions are to be determined that the stakeholder is already identified with another relationship or not. The response had to be no. for an example a department of the government that is associated with a planning with the infrastructure that has listed the both of the unions and the employees as the key stakeholders (Heslinga et al., 2017). However, this is not possible because the union and the employee’s primary relationship in the organization represent the interested of the employees. In this case study, none of the stakeholders are in another relationship. All the stakeholders are dedicated to only their respective department only.
The several questions by which the identification of the key stakeholder made are
- What motivates most of the stakeholders?
- What information the stakeholder wanted from their customers?
- What will win the stakeholders for the support of the project?
- How the user will manage the opposition of the stakeholders?
- Who will be influenced by the opinions of the stakeholders?
- What is the stakeholder’s current opinion of the project?
- Whether the opinion is based on the good or bad information?
- Who influenced the opinions of the stakeholders for us?
The above question will help to understand the key holders for any company or any of the business.
Conclusion
From the above study, it concludes that the stakeholders have to influence fundamentally to the performance of the organization. For an example like a construction manager who construct the houses decided, on the reflection that the council will not be s stakeholder. Despite the local council set some rules for that the construction company had to follow but those rules and the regulations does not affect too much on the profit of the company or the sales of the customer what the customer did. In this case, the ministry, employees, project head, directors had the direct impact on the schools payroll so they can be stated as the key stakeholders.
References
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